Miss Cara Burch (1878-1961)

Artist John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925)

Date1888

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions30 x 25 1/4 in. (76.2 x 64.1 cm)
Frame Dimension: 36 1/4 × 31 3/8 × 2 3/4 in. (92.1 × 79.7 × 7 cm)

ClassificationsOil Painting

Credit LineCharles F. Smith Fund

Terms

Object number1942.02

DescriptionSargent sailed from England to America in September 1887, expecting to stay no more than two months. However, this first "working trip" to the United States lasted eight months, owing to the high demand for his portraits. The journey was, as Sargent stated, "a turning point in my fortunes."(1) He remained in Boston until late January 1888, leaving the day after the celebratory dinner at the Saint Botolph Club marking the first solo exhibition of his career. By January 29 he was in New York, where he continued a hectic painting and social schedule, working out of a rented studio at 52 Washington Square, where Carolina ("Cara") Van Cott Burch likely sat for her portrait.(2)
The daughter of "Brooklyn Daily Eagle" managing editor Robert Burch and his wife, the former Lizette Montmollin, Caroline Burch (1878-1961) was named for her aunt Caroline Montmollin Sargent, the wife of the artist's uncle Dr. Gorham Parsons Sargent. Thus, though unrelated by blood, artist and sitter shared an aunt, and it was doubtless because of this connection that Sargent agreed to paint the child's portrait, devoting seven sessions to it.
Despite the portrait's relatively minor status compared to the grander accomplishments of Sargent's 1887-88 stay in America, it fits securely within his manner of portraying children as thoughtful personalities whose expressions often betray a sober (and sometimes uneasy) awareness of being observed. The half-length seated composition brings the young girl close to the picture plane, allowing for the painterly drama of the frilled white dress against the rich crimson upholstery of the eighteenth-century French chair to register without overpowering her face. The simple format, vigorus brushwork, and palette of "Miss Cara Burch" bear comparison with Carolus-Duran's 1885 "Portrait of Prince Michel Orsini at Eight Years of Age" (private collection), and both works demonstrate their common formal ancestry in the art of the Spanish Baroque master Velázquez.
While the painting is satisfying in and of itself, its success as a portrait was questioned at the outset. Caroline Burch later recalled: "At first he painted my hands in my lap, but concluding they looked like radishes, he took them out. My family received the portrait in complete silence. It was distinctly not a likeness though the painting of the white starched dress was superb. It was later exhibited in New York and pronounced by the critics as one of his less pleasing portraits though adding that emphatically the child was alive."(3) Indeed, as one reviewer put it, "It has charming work on [the] sofa, white-starched and ironed frock, and ruddy cheeks. . . . Though not by any means the best work we have had from this clever hand, it has excellent points."(4)

BDG

Bibliography:
Evan Charteris, "John Sargent" (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927); William Howe Downes, "John S. Sargent: His Life and Work" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927); Richard Ormond, "John Singer Sargent: Paintings, Drawings and Watercolors" (New York: Harper and Row, 1970) Carter Ratcliff, "John Singer Sargent" (New York: Abbeville Press, 1982); Trevor Fairbrother, "John Singer Sargent" (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994) Marc Simpson, "Uncanny Spectacle: The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent", exhib. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press; Williamstown, Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1997).

NOTES:
1. Sargent to H. G. Marquand, March 18 [1898], cited in Fairbrother, "John Singer Sargent", p. 91.
2. There is a question regarding the location of the studio. In a 1958 letter to Sargent scholar David McKibbin (a transcription of a portion of which is in the NBMAA files; the original is unlocated), the sitter recalled going to a New York studio "somewhere in the fifties."
3. Ibid.
4. "The Academy Pictures," "New York Times", April 7, 1889, p. 5.

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